Ep. 82: Micro-Internships at Governors State University with Dr. Elaine Maimon

Ep. 82: Micro-Internships at Governors State University with Dr. Elaine Maimon

♪ Helix ♪ – To start this off, can you give us a high-level definitional overview of what a micro-internship is? – The micro-internship is the opportunity for students to compete
to do online projects that are paid by various companies. It’s something that doesn’t
last a whole semester or a whole summer. I suppose in the natural
parlance of things we call it a gig, these are gig internships. – When I heard about this
initiative at Governors, I started thinking about perfect for the near-grad or the almost-grad, but you talk about a different use case, the idea of students applying
for these micro-internships really early in their
degree program to know what their post-degree
life might look like before committing to the degree. – Absolutely. The whole idea of selecting a major, and then finding out how
you’re going to be able to put bread on your
table with that major, and also be excited
about what you’re doing is something that you need to explore in the freshman and sophomore years. From the student’s point of view, it’s a way, kind of low-risk, to try something out, to
be successful, we hope, and then through the student’s
undergraduate career, to do perhaps a number of
these micro-internships and then have a resume that
is going to be very attractive to future employers
including those companies that have offered the micro-internships.